And, as my fingers on the sampler move,
Engage my tender heart to seek thy love.
With thy dear children may I have a part,
And write thy Name, thyself, upon my heart.
And it was gone! She went into the lumber-room, and picked it out from under a pile of old prints and shabbily framed certificates for prize cattle.
With a sad heart Aspatria regarded the other changes. Her little tent-bed, with its white dimity curtains, had been given to baby’s nurse. The vase her father had bought her at Kendal fair was broken. Her small mirror and dressing-table had been removed for a fine Psyche in a gilded frame. Nothing, nothing was untouched, but the big dower-chest into which she had flung her wretched wedding-clothes. She stood silently before it, reflecting, with excusable ill-nature, that neither Will nor Alice knew the secret of its spring. Her mother had taught it to her, and that bit of knowledge she determined to keep to herself.
After some hesitation she tried the 191 spring: it answered her pressure at once; the lid flew back, and there lay the unhappy white satin dress, the wreath, and veil, and slippers, just as she had tumbled them in. The bitter hour came sharply back to her; she thought and gazed, and thought and gazed, until she felt herself to be weeping. Then she softly closed 192 the lid, and, as she did so, a smile parted her lips,—a smile that denied all that her tears said; a smile of hope, of good presage, of coming happiness.
She stayed only a week at Seat-Ambar, though she had originally intended to remain until the harvest was over. The time was spent in public festivity; every one in Allerdale was invited to give her a fitting welcome. But the very formality of all this entertainment pained her. It was, after all, only a cruel evidence that Will and Alice did not care to take her into their real home-life. She would rather have sat alone with them, and talked of their hopes and plans, and been permitted to make friends of the babies.